Ditthardt's Dramatics Give Troy 9-7 Win

Saturday, March 21

Troy

6:00 PM

Troy University

Western Kentucky

3/21/2009 5:00:00 AM | Baseball

The Troy Trojans have been waiting almost two weeks for something good to happen.

They finally got it in the bottom of the 13th inning Saturday night when junior Ryan Ditthardt launched a two-out, two-run homer off Western Kentucky's Evan Teague to give Troy a 9-7 victory in the second game of the weekend Sun Belt Conference series.

The teams will play the rubber game of the series on Sunday, with the first pitch scheduled for 1 p.m.

“There were some great plays, some game-saving plays in this game tonight,” Troy coach Bobby Pierce said. “Ditthardt is coming back, you can see that he is swinging the bat better, and I am surprised that they allowed him to swing it at the end of the game.”

Ditthardt's late-inning heroics saved what could have been a disastrous night for the Trojans. Troy got a dominant pitching performance from freshman Tyler Ray and went to the ninth inning with a 7-2 lead.

The Trojans gave the ball to junior Chris Sorce in the ninth, expecting him to close out the win. Sorce came into the game having allowed just two runs in 17.1 innings all year. Instead of closing out the win, Sorce struggled to get an out.

He opened the inning with a walk and then surrendered five straight base hits, which closed the Troy lead to 7-5. WKU star Wade Gaynor followed with a sacrifice fly, cutting the Troy lead to 7-6, and then All-American Chad Cregar followed with an RBI single to knot the score and chase Sorce.

“Give WKU a lot of credit,” Pierce said. “They did what no other team has been able to do this year, and that is hit Chris Sorce.”

With the game tied, and WKU still with runners on the corner, Troy turned to junior Tim Wheeler (2-0). Wheeler got Matt Rice to hit a fly ball to short right field that Troy's Michael Precise turned into an inning-ending double-play by throwing a strike to freshman catch Blake Martz to nail Matt Payton trying to score from third.

The downside of the play was that Payton slid hard into the left knee of Martz, who had to be helped off the field following the collision.

“The good news is that is looks like it is just a strained MCL,” Pierce said. “When it happened, it looked a lot worse. I thought he might have broken his leg. He'll get an MRI on it, but we think it is just a strain, and that is great news.”

Wheeler and WKU the WKU bull pen matched each other with three scoreless innings before Troy came to bat in the 13th. Teague (1-1), a senior left-hander who earned the save in the Hilltoppers' win on Friday night, came on with two out in the 11th inning and retired the first four hitters he faced.

In the 13th, Troy junior Steven Felix opened the inning with an unusual bunt single. Felix tried to push a bunt toward second, but instead popped the ball behind the mound, where it dropped between three WKU players.

J.R. Myers followed with a sacrifice bunt before Precise grounded to third. With two out, Felix swiped third base on the first pitch to Ditthardt, and the junior from Miami took care of the rest.

“He started me with a fast ball that I fouled off,” Ditthardt said. “After that he came back with a curve that I just missed. He came back with another curve and left it up over the plate and I was able to hit it hard.”

The win for Troy (12-8, 2-3) snapped a season-long three-game losing skid and handed the Hilltoppers (13-6, 7-1) their first loss in Sun Belt play this year.

“This is the kind of win that can turn a season around,” Pierce said. “We have got another important game tomorrow, but this is the kind of win that can really get a team rolling.”

Ditthardt was the unquestioned offensive star of the game, gathering four hits and driving in six of the Trojans' nine runs. Precise, Brett Henry and Trevor Tyre all had two hits each for the Trojans in a 16-hit attack.

Payton led WKU, which also had 16 hits in the game, with four, including a two-run homer off Ray in the fifth. It was the only mistake the freshman made on the mound in eight innings of work.

Cregar added three hits for the Hilltoppers while Jake Wells and Matt Hightower, who started the game on the mound for WKU, had two each. Gaynor went hitless in four official at bats, snapping his 17-game hit streak.

“This would have been a hard game for us to come back from if we had lost,” Wheeler said. “But this is a game that can really turn our season around.”